xub313

Turns out Pathfinder was a pretty good idea.

I sent probes to Moho and Eve, to orbit this time, not just fly by. Both the Moho Messenger and Eve Explorer carry magnetometers and relay dishes. They'll set up in polar orbits to survey each planet's biomes/anomalies. The Eve Explorer carries a smaller probe, the Eve Skimmer (the small grey box), that will dip into Eve's lower atmosphere with its fluid-spectro-variowhatever. The really fun stuff is behind the scenes though. I think I've figured out a pretty good way of planning missions that is efficient but also easy enough to do by hand with just a pocket calculator. I've been figuring out what inclination I should be launching into to save me some delta v on those inclination changes for Moho. Porkchop plot? I keep my kerbals are kosher. I also made a simulation for long burns so that I can have long LV-N burns and keep my spacecraft horizontal the entire burn instead of pointing it at a maneuver node marker.

You could also use a KAL-1000 to retract the antenna for a few minutes and then extend it again once the craft has landed.

I tested an experimental minishuttle. The Mk1 plane parts are difficult to bring down without overheating, especially with 1.2x reentry heat. The Condor X-1 is a barebones glider for dummy testing. Recent attempts have all burned up, I might just use the Mk2 parts instead. I also launched a direct ascent Mun landing fulfil the "return from the surface of the Mun" contract. Jeb likes BIG rockets and BIG landers! The big lander let me bring lots of cargo so I finally got to check out the EVA construction. The stamp-o-tron works well as a lift for rover construction. Here bill is building the gang a rover while Jeb holds the flashlight.

I sent a probe to fly by Moho in my career save. I just barely had enough fuel after I messed up my ejection burn. Moho is not to be underestimated. Those 4 antennas just barely give me enough signal strength on hard difficulty.

I like the Dawn ion engine. Long burn times don't bother me, I just read a book or something. I've even used them to redirect asteroids.

I've also been getting back into KSP. I even made an Excel "program" to predict rocket launches too. If you want a thorough breakdown of KSPs drag mechanics, I recommend you read this post I found the other day. I haven't used his KOS script, but his calculations are very close to the game's debug tooltips. You're right that the drag factors from the pseudo-Reynolds number and Mach number are independent. The multipliers for Re and M are defined in KSPs physics.cfg file using splines (DRAG_PSEUDOREYNOLDS and DRAG_MULTIPLIER.) These are the same for every craft, however, these are only applied after KSP calculates the drag for each part, a function of its drag cube, heading, and Mach. Mach effects each craft differently, which makes sense, a pointy craft will be less affected by Mach than a blunt one. You can see this in the splines I mentioned where tip drag is heavily emphasized past Mach 1. If you're interested, I plugged a bunch of the splines from physics.cfg into Desmos to see what they looked like. Here's a graph of the Cd multiplier indexed by Mach number.

I usually give it to whomever has the least work to do on the surface. I didn't drag your little green butt all the way to the Mun just for you to sit in the cockpit eatin' snacks while Bill and bob set up a bunch of science equipment!

I'm guessing your big ol' payload on the top of the rocket, whether it's in a fairing or not, is producing a lot of drag. You'll want to put some fins at the back of the rocket to keep it stable. Don't be afraid to go a little overboard, I've even used the big FAT-455 airplane wings as fins to stabilize a very sensitive rocket.

I was only looking at the last three digits. I didn't notice they were 1km off. Good catch. I had plenty of monopropellant, I just have to dump most of it before reentry in order to keep the thing aerodynamically stable. I don't have a quicksave of that launch but I flew the mission again with the exact same craft just for you.

I was using the big-s wings originally and they provide a lot of lift, but it just wasn't enough for me. I saw the videos of your shuttle, so I I'm certain it's possible. Maybe it has more to do with my piloting skill; I couldn't land the extra 40 tons without some suicide maneuver like stalling out just before touchdown. The delta shuttle has about twice the total wing area and allows me to glide much farther than before. Also, I think the big ol' delta wings look cool.

If you upgrade the research center to level 2 in career mode then you get access to resource transfer and can right-click on the tanks to transfer fuel between them.

It's about time I took a crack at this challenge. I love building shuttles in KSP. Here's my submission for STS-1 a and b. I call it the delta shuttle. The big triangular wings are my solution to deorbiting the 40 ton probe without impacting like a meteor when the time comes for that. The only mods I have installed are Distant Object Enhancement and Navball Docking Alignment Indicator.

It has a big-S tail fin on the back.

I accidentally deleted all my programs on my TI-84 a while ago. Most of them were for calculating stuff in KSP. I've rewritten them all and then some. Now I don't even need the wiki to get all the info I need on the planets like their semi-major axis and mean anomaly. I'm a self-sufficient Kerbal player now!